


no sweeping exits or offstage lines

by biblionerd07



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Birthday Presents, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Civil War (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 21:12:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7405015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Steve's birthday, but nothing feels right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no sweeping exits or offstage lines

**Author's Note:**

> A little late, but birthday fic for the one and only Steven Grant Rogers! This is not fun and fluffy birthday fic. This is post-Civil War, MCU canon including the post-credits scene. The title comes from the Rolling Stones' _Wild Horses_.

Steve wakes up at 8 am to his phone ringing. He never sleeps this late. He hasn't slept this late since before the war, since sleep was the only time he wasn't noticeably in pain.

It's a blocked number. Not too strange, considering his line of work and his friends. Not to mention his current status of on-the-run.

"Hello?" He answers after clearing his throat.

"Well, you made it to 98," Natasha says, and a lump rises up thick in his throat.

"Natasha," he says. "Where are you? Are you safe?"

"I'm not telling and yes," she says, voice a little wry. "You forget, Rogers. This isn't the first time I've been on the run."

"I know." He knows too well, is horribly conscious of the fact that she has spent her life not having a life, not for real. The Avengers, the training center, were the closest to family and home she's had, and now that's gone.

"How's Clint and the family?" He asks instead of voicing any of his thoughts.

"They're good," she tells him. "Little Nat's a trooper."

"I thought Clint said to call him Nathan," Steve points out.

"Sure, to you," she fires back easily. It makes him laugh a little. "Well," she says, and he can tell she's leaving again, such as it were. "Happy birthday. Here's to another 98."

"Oh, God," he mutters over her laughter. "Thank you. I hope I get to see you soon." It's half a question.

"Bye," she says. She hangs up. Steve sighs, runs a hand through his hair, and gets up. His hair is longer than he's used to and dyed dark. Sometimes he almost doesn't recognize himself when he passes a mirror, but then again, that's a familiar feeling.

Sam and Wanda are in the kitchen when he goes out. They're in a safe house in Toronto, hiding in plain sight amongst crowds of people politely making their away to the market and work and home again.

"There he is!" Sam calls when he sees Steve. He hits a button on his phone and _The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan_ fills the air. Steve gives him a dirty look.

"You're obnoxious."

"I'm a goddamn gift," Sam counters, handing Steve a plate piled with bacon and eggs and a smiley face made of fruit.

"Happy birthday," Wanda chimes in. She gestures at the table, where two wrapped gifts are waiting. The lump rises up in Steve's throat again. It's still strange, sometimes, to have this. People wishing him a happy birthday and giving him gifts. Before it was only—

He stops himself. He has friends right in front of him. He's going to stay with them.

"Thank you, guys," he says. "This is really nice."

"It's no parade, but I think we did a pretty good job," Sam says. Steve rolls his eyes.

"Those parades were never for _me_ ," he protests. "They were for America."

"Ah, yes," Wanda says. "You have nothing to do with that."

Sam cracks up laughing and Steve shakes his head. She's been spending too much time with Sam. She's getting sarcastic. Or she's getting comfortable enough to see her sarcasm, at least.

"Anybody heard from Fury lately?" Steve asks, digging into his breakfast.

"No," Sam says, narrowing his eyes. "And it's your birthday. We're not doing anything."

"Scott is with him if anything pressing happens today," Wanda adds.

Steve swallows protests, bites back _but we need to_ , clamps his lips down around the desire to stay busy. They think they're helping. They're doing their best. They need a break, in any event.

"Thanks for breakfast," Steve says as he gets up to wash dishes. "Really. I don't know the last time someone made me breakfast."

"Excuse me," Sam squawks, pressing a hand against his chest theatrically. "It was three weeks ago!"

"Bringing me donuts from the hotel lobby counts as making me breakfast?" Steve asks skeptically.

"I had to fight an old lady for that bear claw," Sam reminds him. "Ingrate."

Steve laughs and shrugs. "Alright, fine," he relents. "You're the best."

"Damn right I am," Sam mutters.

Steve hums a little as he does the dishes. Sam leaves to take a shower. Wanda's sitting at the table with a mug of tea, looking out the window quietly.

"Everything alright?" Steve asks, wiping down the counters. It's half memory, because _you're not done with the dishes, Steven, until you've wiped off that counter_ , and half idle work.

She blinks a few times. "Birthdays are not always happy."

Steve bites the inside of his cheek. "No," he agrees. "But this one is."

She watches him for a moment, not speaking. "Okay," she finally says. It rankles a little, her doubting him, but he doesn't push back. She's a kid, not fragile but certainly sad, and Steve's done enough damage in this world without adding snapping at a friend who's trying to consider his feelings to the tally.

"Things can be happy and..." He hesitates. He doesn't want to say _sad_. "Not happy," he finishes lamely.

"Bittersweet," she supplies. He thinks of chocolate shared that left him with a stomachache, the weight of an arm around his shoulders before its owner went to dance with someone else, stolen kisses in the dark that can never be brought to light, and nods.

"Bittersweet," he echoes. It's not completely what he means. Bittersweet seems like both together, happy but cut with sad. Right now he feels more compartmentalized. This section is happy. Over there is anger. And in the corner is grief.

"Well, happy birthday," she says.

"Thank you," he answers. He gives her a smile. "I'll open my gifts later, when Sam's back."

He goes for a run, though he has to be careful. He can't run any faster than a regular human would. He can't attract any attention, can't give anyone a reason to notice or remember him. It's frustrating.

He gets back and showers. There's no sign of Sam or Wanda. Sometimes it feels like they're just sharing a space. They're not really living together. They're just living in the same place.

Steve feels bad for thinking it. The gifts are still on the table. More often than not, Sam stays up late with him, alternating between keeping him laughing and not talking but sharing a heavy, understanding silence. Steve's been told he has a flair for the dramatic. Peggy—

He breathes through the feeling of choking, counts to ten and fifteen and then twenty until he can breathe normally again. He goes to his room and looks at his sketchbook for a minute, but he doesn't open the cover. He checks his phone.

He thought maybe...

He shrugs the thought away and goes to find Sam. He should open the presents they got him.

Wanda knitted him a watch cap, which he can't find much use for now but will undoubtedly use come winter. They never seem to stay anywhere warm. Though he doesn't know where he'll be by then, if he's still fighting and hiding.

If he's still alive.

"Thanks, Wanda," he tells her earnestly, cutting down his bad thoughts at the knees. "I love it." She looks happy at his praise, and it gives him a squirmy feeling. She looks up to him. He knows she does. What he doesn't know is if that's a good thing or not.

Sam bought him a few books of comics. Steve hadn't realized comics were more...serious now. Maybe not serious—there'd been a war on, after all, and that was plenty serious—but they're darker now, geared more at adults than kids who'd scrounged up a few pennies here and there. He'd always loved looking at the lines, at how the artists had blocked out the action, and he'd mentioned it once to Sam. Of course Sam would remember.

"You can check them out and then write your own," Sam suggests, and Steve smiles at the thought.

"I'll write it about you," he says. Sam flexes his biceps.

"That's a great idea."

They laugh and eat cupcakes and Steve thinks, happy. He _is_ happy. That wasn't a lie. He's grateful, lucky to have people.

Sam won't let him go over old mission reports or files or future plans, not on his birthday, so Steve reads his new comics— _graphic novels_ , Sam reminds him—and tries not to look too antsy. He's never done well cooped up in the house.

He checks his phone. Nothing. He didn't expect anything, not really. Sometimes he gets updates, but something has to happen for him to get an update. No news is good news, he supposes. Most of the time. Maybe.

Sam is on the phone for most of the late afternoon, the kind of phone call he takes in his room with the door closed so they can all pretend Steve and Wanda can't hear his choked voice as he talks to his mother and siblings and nephews and nieces.

Steve and Wanda don't have those kinds of calls. That almost seems like a blessing when Sam emerges with red-rimmed eyes.

It leaves Sam quiet and sad, face drawn, so dinner is quiet. It's strange not to have fireworks going off. It doesn't feel real, like his birthday isn't actually happening. He's had fireworks on his birthday his whole life, even the leanest years during the Depression and after he lost his mother when he wanted nothing more than to cover his head with a pillow for about three years.

But there's no reason for a big fireworks show, not when Canada Day was days earlier.

Steve is staring out the window, watching the way the dark is broken only by headlights and street lamps, when his phone chimes. It's on his desk, across the room, and he doesn't lunge for it the way he used to. He can't. It's a sharp pain in his ribs, the same way Peggy is and the Commandos are and the fact that his foothold in the new century got blown to shit.

He should be used to it, probably. He's had practice picking through the wreckage of a past life to put together a new one. It doesn't get easier with practice. It gets harder. He can't imagine how Natasha must feel.

He doesn't know how long he sits there. His eyes slide out of focus and he doesn't bother pulling them back.

“Steve,” Sam says, sounding irritable. “Get your phone. It’s blowing up.”

“Sorry,” Steve mumbles, because on days like this after Sam’s had calls like that he needs quiet. Steve’s phone is face-down, vibrating violently against the countertop. He takes it into his room before answering another blocked number.

“Yes?” He asks, because if Natasha already called there’s no one else wishing him birthday tidings.

There’s a pause. “Captain.”

Steve’s heart picks up. “T’Challa,” he breathes. “Is—is everything alright?”

“Everything is the same,” T’Challa tells him, and Steve’s heart stops pounding. It drops a little. It’s his birthday. He thought—well.

“Oh,” Steve says. “Okay. Can I help you with something?”

“I have a message for you,” T’Challa tells him. “I normally would not take kindly to playing messenger. But I am told it is your birthday.”

“It is,” Steve manages to say, mouth dry.

“Happy birthday,” T’Challa says. It almost makes Steve laugh, because T’Challa’s voice is still perfectly serious and even.

“Thanks.” He doesn’t want to blurt out _what’s the message_ , because that’s rude, but it’s all he can think.

“Well. The message,” T’Challa says, thankfully. “It is from Barnes, as I am sure you guessed. He wrote it down and made sure I marked this day so I could give it to you if he was not yet awakened.”

“Thank you,” Steve says, already grateful. T’Challa is the _king_. He has far more pressing matters at hand than Steve getting a birthday message from Bucky. But here he is, delivering it anyway, and Steve has to clench his jaw tight against the onslaught of emotion.

“His message is this. _Happy birthday. Maybe next year we can go back to the Cyclone and you can throw up again. I am sorry I am not there and I am sorry I have missed a few. I will try to make it up to you when I can. I know you are worrying your big fat head but I am still with you until the end of the line. See you soon, I hope. Love, Bucky_.”

It takes Steve three tries before he can speak. “Thank you,” he chokes out, fighting to compose himself. “Do you think—could you mail that to me? The paper he wrote it down on? I just—I mean…”

“Yes,” T’Challa puts an end to his babbling. “I will mail it to you. I assume you have a safe post box I can send it to?”

Steve gives him the address, the box they use for drops sometimes when they do missions for Fury. He’ll have to drive all day to get it when it comes, but it’ll be more than worth it. That throb is back under his ribs, the stabbing feeling in his heart that the serum was supposed to fix. Easy for Bucky to _say_ he’s still there with Steve when he’s actually asleep under ice again.

Steve shakes his head to clear it of those thoughts. Bucky had seventy years of pain and torture and no agency. If he wants to sleep for a few years, Steve won’t begrudge him.

Or he’ll try not to, anyway.

“Thank you,” Steve repeats before he hangs up with T’Challa. “For everything. But thank you for this.”

“It is my pleasure,” T’Challa says, and Steve really believes it.

He sits on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands for a few minutes, breathing deep and allowing himself the luxury of hurting. He thinks of Bucky’s face as the cold mist sprang up around him and he remembers Bucky whispering in his ear every night before bed and he pictures Bucky’s head thrown back wildly. Steve presses his lips together and digs his fingernails into his palms and gives himself one short minute to drown in the sharp, crushing pain, and then he wipes his nose and his rubs his hands on his pants and he pushes his long hair off his forehead.

He’s not getting what he wanted this birthday, but it doesn’t mean it’s a bad birthday. Bittersweet, like Wanda said. And besides, he’ll have more birthdays, most likely. He’s had this many; it seems ludicrous that he won’t have at least one more. He’ll hold Bucky to his promise.

Until then, he’ll read graphic novels and sing off-key while Sam is trying to harmonize and knit with Wanda and move safe houses every three weeks and he will keep moving, keep fighting, keep living. He made some promises of his own, to a few different people, and he is a man of his word. He’ll stay busy, and one day, maybe soon, he will finally get to lay his head down and he will rest.

He nods at himself in the mirror. He’s looking forward to it. But for now, he can wait.

**Author's Note:**

> [My tumblr.](http://www.biblionerd.tumblr.com)


End file.
